With an ongoing water crisis at one of its schools, the Butler School District is now collecting water samples from water fountains and sinks in all of its buildings.

The water samples will be sent to a laboratory to be tested for levels of lead and copper.

In a letter addressed to parents, staff and community members posted Monday to the district's Website, assistant superintendent Brian Slamecka said that all operational water fountains and at least three high-usage sinks in each facility will be tested this week.

“We would like to stress that this water testing is strictly voluntary and precautionary,” the letter said.

The district has more than 100 water fountains in its buildings, acting Superintendent William Pettigrew said.

The results, which will take a couple weeks to get back, will be posted to the district's Website.

Officials have no reason to believe that there are high levels of lead in the buildings that are on municipal water, but these tests will provide data on each drinking fountain, some of which are fairly old, Pettigrew said.

“If there is any problem we will immediately take care of that fountain,” he said.

The district will test the senior and intermediate high schools, Butler Middle School, Center Avenue Community School and seven elementary schools, including the Broad Street Elementary School in Butler that is being used temporarily. Three samples of water from the Broad Street school were tested earlier this month and did not have unsafe levels, though not every drinking fountain there was sampled.

Test results at Summit Township Elementary School in August and January showed the school's water contained unsafe levels of lead and copper.

Summit is the only building in the district that uses well water and engineers suspect that increasingly acidic well water caused lead solder used on the pipes in the school to dissolve.

Students from that school are attending the Broad Street school while the district addresses the problems there.

A second round of samples were collected for testing last week at Summit elementary. Engineering firm Gannett Fleming will have those results back some time next week, Pettigrew said.

Once the additional results come in, officials will discuss a plan of action for correcting the problems at the school, which will then be recommended to the school board for approval, he said.